Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Disappearing Skyscraper

I mentioned Turning Torso, the Malmö skyscraper, in my previous blog post. The building intrigues me, so I stare at it as soon as I have it in sight. One time, it was gone.

This most characteristic ingredient in the Malmö cityscape had suddenly disappeared. Where it was supposed to rise proudly, there was only sky.

It was ironic, since that was at a time when this costly building was intensely discussed in the media, and the initiator of the project was taking a lot of heat – quite ridiculously, since this is now one of the few things at all putting Malmö on the world map.

Had the expensive skyscraper vanished?

Slowly, teasingly, it started to reappear in the sky. Some local fog or cloud or something had hidden it. For the next hour or so, the building kept disappearing and reappearing, as if uncertain about the joy of its own existence. A spectacle.

Above is a picture of one of those phases. Below is a video I took of the event. I'm sorry that you have to tilt your head, but I filmed it with my regular digital camera, which I mainly used for still photos, so I forgot that films are always landscape. Surely, I could turn it 90 degrees in any movie editor, but that possibility escaped me before uploading it on YouTube.

About Me

I'm an author, artist, historian of ideas, and aikido instructor. I have also worked as a journalist for Swedish newspapers. I was a literature critic in Aftonbladet, a rock and theater critic in Dagens Nyheter, and the secret restaurant critic in Sydsvenskan. As an historian of ideas at Lund University, I write a dissertation on the thought patterns in creation myths.

My books are both fiction and non-fiction. Among the latter are books about Taoism, aikido, Tarot, mythology, and astrology. Some of them are only in Swedish, but I have written an increasing number of books in English.